Ministers need to start basing policy on hard evidence

There is excellent news rom the US: a key education policy costing hundreds of millions of pounds has been shown to be a conclusive failure.

The policy was a great idea. In sites across the States, a new system of teacher assessment was introduced. Good teachers were encouraged to teach, bad teachers were encouraged to leave. But after seven years, the results of the pilot project came in and it turned out all of that money had been wasted — the children did no better.

Why, then, is this good news? Because almost uniquely among public policy initiatives, it is actually possible to say definitively that this one did not work. The reason for certainty is that $200 million of funding for the project came…

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